


The Stuntmen

by AskDrKnockOut, Iron



Series: TFCon Commissions [4]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Medical Experiments, Medical Procedures, Multi, No RID 2015, Other, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Shockwave’s brand of fuckery, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:14:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22220878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AskDrKnockOut/pseuds/AskDrKnockOut, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: The Stunticons were one of the first gestalts to be created for the War and for Megatron. Now, the war over and one of their own dead, they’ve found the mech they believe to be responsible and the the only mech in the universe able and willing to give them what they want.On Post-War Cybertron Knockout is just trying to build a life in peace without his conjux in it. Unfortunately, peace isn’t all he’d thought it’d be, and when his lover’s past comes knocking he can’t stop himself from opening the door.
Relationships: Knockout/Breakdown, Knockout/Stunticons, Stunticons/Breakdown
Series: TFCon Commissions [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566976
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	The Stuntmen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AskDrKnockOut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AskDrKnockOut/gifts).



> For [@artzrachel](https://mobile.twitter.com/artzrachel?lang=en)on Twitter! She gave me the prompt and a lot of the ideas I’m working with on this fic! She’s amazing and, if you get the chance, you should check out her stuff, and come join me at [my Twitter here!](https://mobile.twitter.com/fab_roddy)

The sky overhead is a low, green ceiling of smoke and fire and screaming. Breakdown hunches his back as a body goes screaming over his helm, trying to stick glower to Dragstrip just in case someone breaks through the front lines. Technically _they_ should be up there, but Breakdown had begged off with a popped wheel and the need to replace it. He drags the leg through the muck, feeling vulnerable and off-kilter without the rest of his team at his back. Dragstrip certainly wouldn’t protect him if something came at him – probably just mutter something about the ‘inevitability of death’ and move on. It’s honestly unlucky that of all the kinds of mechs he could get stuck with, he got shoved into the unit of walking personality disorders. 

Breakdown flinches again when a mech comes too close, this time hard enough to startle and drop to the ground. He whimpers; it put too much pain on his damaged ped and now it feels like everything’s gone black inside his helm. A hand catches under his elbow, and he leans into the touch. 

“Oh, what _has_ happened to you?” A sweet voice croons, and Breakdown jerks his chin down to look at the medic just out of arm’s reach. His first thought is _shiny_ , all red and smooth and incongruently clean against the much of the alien planet they’ve found themselves on, and then, _too good for me_ , because anyone like that _is_. 

“Nothing,” he gruffs. Ahead of him Dragstrip snarls at nothing, not quite wanting to get back to the frontlines but bored so far away from the action. “Got a popped wheel.” 

“Looks like you’ve got more than that.” 

“Just the wheel.” Red optics catch ones that should be described in prettier words – carnelian, garnet – glowing brightly even under the cloud cover. 

“Step into my tent,” he croons, the pretty medic motioning him towards the edge of the clearing. Breakdown, drawn inexplicably towards the lovely creature, goes. Even limping on one bad ped doesn’t slow him much when it comes to following the medic’s commands. 

The temporary medbay is cleaner than he expected, really, with a slap in the center and an array of neatly ordered counters lining the walls. The pretty medic not so gently prods him into sitting on the edge of the slab, and Breakdown drops his aft down heavily on the slab. It doesn’t creak under his weight - he’s not that big, barely above average for construction class - and the medic circles him slowly, high efficiency engine humming slowly. “You’re in a smaller frame than your spark class usually supports,” he notes, a curious little hum to his voice. Breakdown bristles anyways. 

“I’m not _small_. And I’m a gestalt member. We all went through reformats to match the core frame for the margins.” 

“Ah.” Sharp claws skitter over his shoulder, spinning his upper wheel and making him shiver before the mech slides to a kneeling position in front of him. Large, cold, gentle hands take the ped with the popped wheel and hold it against his chest gently. Clever claw tips clean out seams and study the way the wheel is bolted to the well and his frame, the way it slides into where his axel will be when he transformers. “Well, I know you’re well built.” 

Breakdown looks away, suddenly unable to take in the mech. Well built - the medic couldn’t mean what he was implying. 

Thin clawtips fit a tool around the anchoring points in his wheel well, and the medic keeps talking. “You’re going to need to let the wheel recalibrate on its own; it shouldn’t take more than half an hour. I _do_ not want to see you injured in my medbay again, against my peace. If you d, you’d better be holding a trophy telling me the whole damn wart is over. Understand?”

Breakdown nods helplessly. Hands run up and down his leg before the medic reaches for a standard sized, deep-treaded while. Something sharp and electric sings up his spine, and as soon as the medic’s stepped away, wheel attached to his ped, Breakdown flees. 

He doesn’t want to go back to the battlefield, but he finds himself under the grey sky, surrounded by death, all the same. He keeps his acid rifle in his hands and he doesn’t think about how ill-suited this pre-fab frame is for him, built for speed over power, just keeps shooting and fighting and not thinking. Thinking’s bad. Thinking slows you down enough to get dead. 

It’s the same excuse he tells Motormaster when he shoots the aft in the helm, the shot going just wide enough to scrape the edge of Motormaster’s huge helm, taking off a chunk of his helm but leaving most of him intact. In the fury and the sounds of war, one big helm looked just like another – or, at the least, that is what he said when Motormaster hauled him up by his fairing and asked him what the frag he was doing. 

Breakdown spits in his face, and Motormaster’s grin is sharp and wider on one side than another as he raises him up, and up, until his peds hang over the ground and he’s scrambling just to keep his own weight from ripping bits of his armor off .

“You’re right, of course. Anything can happen in war.” Then he’d pressed the hot muzzle of his blaster to Breakdown’s stomach and pulled the trigger, and fire ripped through Breakdown’s delicate internals. His world became _heat_ and _pain_ and he swallowed back hot energon in his mouth as he was tossed aside in the muck. “Leave him. He’s a traitor, anyways.” 

Breakdown thought that maybe Wildrider, too damaged to even be afraid of Motormaster, might tell the bastard off for leaving one of his unit - one of his _gestalt_ , valued by Megatron and vital to the war effort - leaking out slowly on the ground. Maybe he does; he hears someone say that limbs are “Easily replaceable” as his main processors force him into a hard reboot to escape the pain. 

His last thought, as light and noise slips away from him, is that he’d missed construction. 

He’s not conscious enough to see red peds stepping in front of his face. 

— 

Knockout jerks awake in the darkened concrete hovel that is the Autobot’s current headquarters on Cybertron, spark spinning too fast with the remnants of blue-plating and large hands. A dream, just a dream. Barely even that, really. Just phantom touches and barely-there ghosts of lost conjuxes and long gone days. Nothing. It was nothing and he needs to move on. 

He swings his legs over the side of the berth, frame feeling heavy despite his light-weight speedster frame. He aches from his peds to the tip of his helm, joints stiff and the tips of his peds barely scraping the ground. Still he heaves himself upwards and out of his berth, to get ready for the day to come. He feels vague and ill-defined in the morning light, but it’s nothing, and he goes through the motions of shining away what dirt and streaks had collected during the night, applying his wax, pretending normality. 

Outside the dawn crests over the broken horizon, finding inlets between crumbling and ancient infrastructure. The sky is blue and yellow and on fire, and he looks at it and knows it means peace. Peace and a continuance. 

He gets ready for another day without Breakdown in it.


End file.
